Submission Failure

In his latest novel Soumission (Submission), Michel Houellebecq has abandoned his trademark realism and acerbic satire for fantasy. This entry is a hatchet job of the novel, which I will argue is as weird and disconcerting as the author's latest publicity photos (see below). But my ire is directed as much towards the novelist as towards critics who seem unable to get a handle on the book’s sensitive subject matter and to appraise it for what it is. In the absence of a satisfactory review, I offer my own.

Don’t get me wrong – Michel Houellebecq is not a bad writer. I wrote a MA thesis about him when he was still the new enfant terrible on the block. Like many millennials, I was struck and awed by his raw portrayal of our morally bankrupt, decadent and selfish society. In my research, however, I argued that the French literary press was way off the mark in labelling him a radical “avant-garde.” He was an edgy realist writing tales for our times, voilà tout. Hadn’t they read Balzac?

Houellebecq - Syphilis Chic

If you’re reading this, you probably know who Houellebecq is. He is small man with a big literary presence – by far the biggest-selling French novelist of the past decade. He emerged on the scene in the mid-1990s with Extension du domaine de la lute (translated into English as Whatever), the story of an IT technician’s disaffection and debauchery that bleakly equates sexual satisfaction with market economics. The novel, which was successful thanks to word-of-mouth reviews, established Houellebecq as a writer-to-watch.

He followed up this success with Les Particules Élémentaires (Atomised in English) – a thought-provoking novel that tackles cults, hippies, the legacy of 1968 and the genetic possibility of doing away with man. His third novel, Platform, is about a 40-year-old male who finds true love in the midst of a sex tourism enterprise, and is in many ways his most mature and humanistic novel. In La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island) he returned to the dystopian theme of cults and cryogenics, coupled with his trademark pessimism about contemporary life in France.

La Carte et le Territoire (The Map and the Territory), the fictional biography of a star of the modern art world, was published in 2010. This ambitious novel cleverly experiments with genres and reader-expectations, ending as a detective story after a fictional character named Michel Houellebecq is murdered. More temperate and more salubrious than previous works, it achieved Houllebecq academic recognition by winning the Prix Goncourt – France’s equivalent of the Man Booker Prize.

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Sousmission is Houellebecq’s sixth major novel. In brief, it tells the story of François, Professor at the Sorbonne and specialist in the nineteenth-century writer Huysmans. Indifferent to his life and career, though not to his subject, he is swept up in a tidal wave of extremist politics that pits the French far right against a “Republican front” led by Ben Abbes, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. After his election, the Islamisation of France occurs at breakneck speed, with French women wearing the veil, men taking multiple wives and professors having to publically convert in order to keep their positions.

In a twist of fate that only a writer could have imagined, Soumission was published the very same day of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.[1] The satirical newspaper even had a caricature of Houellebecq on the front page of that day’s edition, with a caption saying that in 2022 he would be celebrating Ramadan. Inextricably linked to the Charlie tragedy, he fled Paris under police protection. Assuming his new book would be his coup de grace to Mohammedists, critics readied their knives.[2] Some of them fell straight into the trap laid for them, hammering Houellebecq for his racism and intolerance before opening the book.[3]

Cover of Charlie Hebdo, 7 January 2015

The catch is that Soumission, believe it or not, is not anti-Islam. At all. The religion is presented without irony as a utopian solution of kinds to France’s fundamental flaws, a means of filling the moral gap left by the demise of Christianity and restoring order after the disappearance of patriarchy. Houellebecq’s satirical bile is aimed almost exclusively at the effete French political classes and professors, who are more interested in microwave meals and shagging students than any form of political engagement.

Taken aback by the absence of Islamophobia in Soumission, the vast majority of literary critics in the press have reviewed the novel positively. Alex Preston for instance observes in the Guardian that it is “both a more subtle and less immediately scandalous satire than the brouhaha surrounding it might suggest.”[4] If it isn’t racist hogwash, such critics tend to conclude that it must be rather good – a satire of Orwellian foresight and Swiftian subtlety. It isn’t, for reasons I’ll go into here.

The problems are manifold, but essentially boil down to this. While it is not unthinkable that French Islam could get some form of political representation (one such party, the UDMF, already exists), the prospect of it gaining enough mainstream support to front a winning collation in seven years’ time is totally and utterly unthinkable. The establishment would never allow them to progress this far, and if ever there were a situation where France had to choose between the National Front and an Islamic-led coalition, could anyone seriously doubt that the former would not waltz into power?

Equally preposterous is the form of Islam adopted in France. It is an orientalised Islam that offers a libertine paradise for Frenchmen. Those who struggled to find partners in the old regime – pathetic men like scholars – are now patriarchal heroes able to find wives to cook for them, keep them company and, above all, satisfy their every sexual desire. The title of the novel, incidentally, is foremost a reference to this. Alcohol still abounds, for some unexplained reason. Could this male utopia exist any place on earth, other than in the warped fantasia concocted by Michel Houellebecq? In essence, the novel’s prophecies for 2022 are about as serious and far off the mark as Back to the Future’s depiction of 2015.

Another problem is that one senses early on that Houellebecq is as interested in politics as his protagonist, who is “about as political as a bath towel.” Houellebecq’s novels trade in the dirty and gritty, but politics, ugh. At best it’s a spectator sport for old people. But given that the novel is principally about just that, it is a further fail point of the novel. Incidentally, it is remarkable that Houellebecq is able to openly satirise a generation of French politicians – no doubt counting on the fact that a liable suit would be too damaging to their public image.

Another criticism of the novel is the way in which Houellebecq undertakes a potentially fascinating parallel with Huysmans. Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Huysmans’ masterpiece À rebours, embodies the decadent idea par excellence that contentment lies in withdrawing from society and retreating into one’s own “den of delights.” In this work, Huysmans radically broke with Emile Zola, whose Naturalists naively believed they could make the world a better place by exposing injustices and promoting nice values like socialism. Des Esseintes is François’, and by extension Houellebecq’s, alter ego – the original escapist fantasist. Yet François chooses a different path – that of the engagé accidentel (the “accidental activist”). It is so much less romantic than Des Esseintes’ glorious isolation, and so further exacerbates our disappointment. 

Des Esseintes - Houellebecq's Fantasy Alter Ego

The satire on university life is more credible, even if Houellebecq insists on reminding us in a rather odd end note that he has never set foot in a university. Academic fortunes are made and broken according to who they sleep with or are related to – and positions are given to people who have recycled dissertations on Rimbaud found in provincial university cupboards. The notion that French intellectuals would agree to quit without protest in exchange for Saudi petrol dollars is funny, but again, not realistic.

Houellebecq’s treatment of scholarly life becomes a little more unstuck when he pushes his outmoded and puerile theory that “an author is above all a human being, present in his books.” This is at odds with the mainstay of literary theory that resists any crass equivalence between an author’s life and his work. Does Houellebecq want us to read his novel uniquely as an expository of his own hang-ups? It is well known that his mother converted to Islam after years as a hippy libertine. Has he finally come to peace with her abandonment – is that what this is all about?

In the same passage, Houellebecq’s protagonist insists that “to love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him.” It is hard to love Houellebecq (or at least to publically admit to it) – he takes such a masochistic pleasure in infusing his own bodily decrepitude in his character’s, dwelling on the revolting ailments at length and with glee. It was much easier to read his nihilistic passages on sex in earlier novels. It was also easier to stand up for him when he had something important to say.

Houellebecq’s detractors often claim he is a media phenomenon masquerading as a maître and this latest novel gives fodder to this point of view. Indeed, whereas each of his previous novels explored new directions for humanity – plausible dystopias that are exaggerated versions of present-day reality – Soumission merely presents us with a ludicrously implausible fantasy. At its core, the novel seems to be a response to contemporary Islamophobia and a product of Houellebecq’s fantastical relationship with the religion, without having anything serious to say about it. One might even allege that the spectacular plot was conceived as a sure-fire way to garner spectacular sales.

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[1] On the morning of 7 January 2015 at about 11:30 local time, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed the office of Charlo Hebdo on 7 January killing twelve people. The newspaper had caused offence due to its controversial depictions of Muhammad.

[2] In 2002, Houellebecq was prosecuted, albeit unsuccessfully, for saying in an interview that “Islam was the stupidest of religions.” (“La religion la plus con, c’est … l’islam.”)

[3] The writer Christine Angot has said: “Submission is a novel… that dirties anyone who reads it. It isn’t a tract but a work of graffiti: ‘shit’ to anyone who reads it!” Fouad Laroui writes: “… Houellebecq is participating in a quasi-biological resurgence of racism that we thought had definitively disappeared.”

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/08/submission-michel-houellebecq-review-satire-islamic-france

Killing Time with Scandi-Noir

(Published in Multiverse – Singapore, Oct 2015)

“All things in nature are dark except where exposed by light.” 

Leonardo da Vinci

I realised my addiction had got out of hand in the labour ward of Raffles Hospital. My wife didn’t appear to be in much pain, so I suggested we do what we’d been doing every evening for the past weeks. Only when she said “no” did I really believe that our daughter was about to be born.

Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl)

The medical term for the addiction of which I speak is Forbrydelsen, which literally means “The Crime” but has been translated into English as “The Killing.” It is a Danish mystery series about a single-minded detective Sarah Lund’s investigation into the murder of the 19-year-old Nanna Birk Larsen. When two humanities professors become fanatical about a television series, it usually – though not always – means something is up. My wife, Anna, has literally read and watched every mystery story ever written – and she is not given to hyperbole (unlike me). So when she used the word “masterpiece” about the series my suspicion that it is a cut above the rest was confirmed. I also knew sooner or later I would be compelled to write about this particular addiction.

In this article I will present the phenomenon known as Scandi-Noir and an anatomy of a mystery masterpiece – in other words, why Forbrydelsen is a totally awesome show and why you should watch it. But first some cultural context. Don’t skip this part, it’s important. Scandinavia – Denmark, Norway and Sweden – is a lovely part of the world. On Midsummer’s Eve, the sun barely sets. Fair-haired children pick flowers and dance around the maypole while their older siblings get high in the woods and their parents sip on Schnapps and crunch on herring and lingonberry jam sandwiches. Harmony reigns! Swedes have a reputation for being joyous libertines. Scandinavian countries are as orderly and culture-rich as any in Europe. The governments are seen as exemplary models of the welfare state where the industrious prosper but where poorer citizens want for nothing. Swedish exports include Ikea and Abba. Enough said.

Swedish Midsummer (courtesy of IKEA)

But beneath the picture-postcard prettiness, there is a dark side to Scandinavia. And boy is it dark. Literally dark – at the winter solstice, there are barely a few hours of daylight and it is very, very cold. Suicide rates are high. Likewise, when one probes beyond the veneer of the perfect-looking societies, one finds cracks. Modern day Scandinavian countries are not immune from the pressures facing all of Europe – the widening of rich-poor divide and of social inequality and the pressure for financial austerity after decades of living beyond their means. Scandinavians tend to believe that their nations’ best days are already behind them.

There are also few skeletons in their national cupboards. During World War II, Norway and Denmark were occupied by the Germans and governed by collaborators. Sweden avoided occupation by declaring neutrality, yet supplied iron ore and steel to the German war machine. In recent times, xenophobia and white extremism have once again reared their ugly heads. The slaying of seventy-seven youths at a Norwegian summer camp in 2007 by a right-wing extremist is a horrific occurrence and a deeply scaring national tragedy.

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Now back to black – or “noir.” It is a fictional genre of mystery and detective stories telling tales of murder, theft, blackmail, corruption, deceit and sex. Its origins can be traced to the “hard-boiled” detective novels of Depression-era America, where poverty was rife and the good guys didn’t get the girl. Raymond Chandler’s novels (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye) with the original mumbling gumshoe Philip Marlowe have best survived the test of time. As a whole, however, these takes are downright dodge tales of pulp fiction with no lasting literary merit. 

And yet there is something infinitely fascinating about these murky mysteries. Dudley Andrew, a scholar and specialist in the genre, explains that they are “a sign of deeper, darker truths ... their contradictory tone, both hushed and hysterical, expressed unconsciously the existential angst of the times.”[1] Their poetic quality was captured in screen adaptations of the 1940s and 50s – a time when Hollywood, both tonally and morally, went over to the dark side. Film noir’s shadowy black-and-white imagery accentuated the moral ambiguity of its antiheroes and provided bleak backdrops for their demise, more-often-than-not at the hands of a deadly femme fatale.

Classic film noir chiaroscuro
(The Killers, 1946)

Scandi-Noir is a modern, hybridised version of its American counterpart. At its best, it is more philosophical, more political and more powerful. It harnesses the tension between the idyllic surface and the dark lower depths, indiscriminately probing the raison-d’être of all its inhabitants – it is an intoxicating formula. Not everyone is a villain in Scandi-Noir – there are some sheep in among the wolves. In a sense, the genre can be conceived of as a mirror image of Scandinavia itself; beautifully bleak.

I won’t give a long history of Scandinavian noir, but again a bit of context is helpful. Its earliest origins can be traced way, way back to ancient Nordic folklore. Few other ancient cultures have more creatures that go bump in the night. Trolls are obese half-wits who cause no end of mischief, but the real danger comes Maras (she-werewolves), Huldras and Elves; all prototype femmes fatales. 

Maras, Huldras and Elves:
Femme fatale prototypes

We’ll skip the Vikings, who were too busy marauding to leave behind much literature. There is a fascinating outsider case for claiming Hamlet as the first Scandi-Noir. Detective Hamlet investigates the suspicious death of the King, his father, who it turns out has been murdered by his brother and wife (Hamlet’s uncle and mother). As every schoolboy knows, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” and in line with the noir tradition, everyone is dead by the end of the play.

The first work of Scandi-Noir?

In its modern incarnation Scandi-Noir was born in 1975 Stockholm, where a Swedish journalist named Per Wahlöö and a publisher named Maj Sjöwall wrote a series of detective stories about a depressed policeman called Martin Beck. The author Henning Mankell has said that “anyone who writes about crime as a reflection of society,” – as good a definition of the genre as any – “has been inspired to some extent by what they wrote.”[2] Mankell’s own detective series Wallander has made Ystad police and the eponymous detective household names in the UK, thanks to an atmospheric BBC adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh.[3]

By far the most successful international export of Scandi-Noir is the Stieg Larson “Millennium” novels – you’ve probably heard of them, if you haven’t read them. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have sold over eighty million copies worldwide and inspired four film adaptations. In this series, Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a cyber punk teen, to fight misogynistic Nazi industrialists intent on destroying the Swedish liberal left.[4] The novels are compelling and thought-provoking, an all-too-rare instance of writing that is both critically and commercially successful.

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We can now turn our attention to Forbrydelsen. Its first claim to “mystery masterpiece” status is that, even more so than the “Millennium” novels, it goes in for the kill when it comes to the politicians. Most mystery stories about abducted teenagers do not feature high-political intrigue, but Forbrydelsen’s genius is to seamlessly marry two noir subgenres – one personal and the other political. Its second stroke of genius is to implicitly frame murder as a philosophical and sociological question; I will endeavour to explain what this means by example.

The first lead in the investigation takes detective Sarah Lund and her partner Jan Meyer to the mayor’s office in Copenhagen. The suspect – a campaign worker who drove the car used to drown the missing teenager in a river – turns out to be a red herring. But a connection has been made with the mayoral candidate Troels Hartmann and both he and the upcoming election will figure in every episode. Troels is a charismatic and enigmatic figure played by Lars Mikkelsen, who has something of an international profile (he was recently the Russian President in the Netflix series House of Cards). On first encounter he seems as sincere as he is suave – an incorruptible operating in the “rotten” waters of Copenhagen politics.

The first test of Troels’ integrity comes when a major suspect in the investigation is revealed as a teacher of Middle-Eastern origin who is a “role model” in a programme to better the lives of young immigrants. Troels refuses to throw the teacher under a bus, proverbially-speaking, in spite of the media storm and damage to his campaign. On face value this is a noble act, but there is a hint of some ulterior motive at play. Is Troels hiding darker, dirtier secrets, as yet uncovered? Is he struggling with self-destructive urges?

Troels Hartmann (Lars Mikkelsen)

Time and time again, Troels has to decide whether to act with integrity or in the interest of his campaign. Evidence suggests that one of his advisers is working against him; but is it his press secretary and lover Rie, or his long-time friend Morten? Among the many secrets to emerge from Troels’ closet is that, after his wife’s death, he was a serial internet seducer using the avatar “Faust.” The reference is heavy-handed, but the point is well made. In a sobering encounter with his mayoral opponent, the corrupt veteran politician Poul Bremer, we understand that the elder statesman was once upon a time as untainted and sincere as his younger rival. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But here’s the rub. Even if Troels has some serious integrity issues, the viewer still roots for him – he is charming and good-looking and we want him to play the game and to win. If statecraft is a dirty business, than our heroes must fight dirty. Are Troels’ secrets darker than any man’s? Naturally, this raises fundamental moral and ethical questions about our democratic value systems, and indeed our own. In the best of noir tradition, we find no easy answers.

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If Forbrydelsen scores highly on content, its form is also excellent. Series creator Søren Sveistrup has taken a leaf out of Alfred Hitchcock’s book, whose motto was to “make the audience suffer as much as possible.” The formula is simple – keep the audience begging to find out whodunit, while providing enough twists, turns and red herrings to put some thrills in the ride – but it is rare for a series, especially one that runs for twenty episodes, to execute it so flawlessly.

The main suspense is derived from the long litany of suspects. Just when you think the evidence against a character is overwhelming, you discover there is an even more convincing culprit. The campaign worker whose car was used in the murder is a troubled man with a history of violence who ties up an old lady when pursued by the police. But he has a cast-iron alibi. Attention then shifts to Nanna’s school friends. Her ex-boyfriend is a rich punk who hosted a secret sex and drugs party in his school basement the very evening of the murder. But surveillance footage emerges of Nanna leaving the school alone – so it wasn’t him.

Rama, a school teacher and former soldier, is a yet more plausible suspect. He hid the fact that a student recently accused him of sexual misconduct and that – go figure – Nanna came to his house after the school party just a few hours before her death. Furthermore, his initial alibi was proven to be a lie. It must be him, right? But no, it turns out that at the time of Nanna’s death he was busy hiding away another teenage girl, an illegal immigrant seeking safe passage in Denmark.

The face of anguish: Theis and Pernille

Dissatisfied with the police investigation, Nanna’s father, Theis, decides to take justice into his own hand and beats Rama to within an inch of his life. It turns out Theis is suspected of committing a murder in his youth. But he has no clear motive for killing his own daughter, so attention turns back to the town hall and the other users of the car. After a missing CCTV tape is mysteriously delivered to Lund, we discover that Troels himself drove the vehicle that evening to a nearby luxury apartment where Nanna’s blood is found. Troels is arrested. It must be Troels, right?

It isn’t. I’ll stop there with the plot spoilers – and needless to say I have only covered a fraction of the twists, turns and intrigues that meander through the series. One would imagine that twenty, hour-long episodes must have some boring bits, and yes – there are some filler scenes. But Forbrydelsen takes its time skilfully – the characters live with you for the duration of the series as you are teased, entertained and drawn deep into its universe. It is the kind of television that is challenging the assumption that only cinema can aspire to visual art.

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There are other aspects of Forbrydelsen that merit praise. The acting is superb – Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) in particular. Her character’s tenacious, at times blinkered – sometimes plain wrong – approach to the case and to her personal life, is entirely plausible. While not easily likeable, she is utterly compelling. The relationship between Lund and her gruff partner Meyer (Søren Malling) unfolds deftly, from hostility to complicity, and this adds a serious emotional kick to the finale when Meyer’s life is threatened. The production value is high – easily rivalling series from countries with much bigger television studios. The cinematography too is skilful, revelling in the dark hues of the wintery land and cityscapes of Copenhagen. Some sequences are especially memorable, such as the moment when the penny drops and Lund finally confronts the killer face to face.

As a critic, of course, I am contractually obliged to point out some flaws. The visuals are not as impressive as, for instance, Wallander or Broadchurch. The culprit is something of a let-down (it almost always is); inevitably it renders half the show’s intrigues irrelevant and also leaves a number of loose-ends. But I will reserve my ire for seasons two and three which fall woefully short of the “mystery masterpiece” status of season one. Season two is all political, with little by way of character drama. The third season, the story of the missing daughter of a rich industrialist – is something of a return to form, but condensed into a mere ten episodes it feels rushed. It does, however, have a strong, enigmatic ending worthy of the noir tradition; one that also means, sadly, Forbrydelsen will not be returning for a fourth series.

And so I conclude my long love letter to Scandi-Noir and my pitch for you to watch Forbrydelsen. I would encourage Singaporean readers in particular to watch this or some other Scandi-Noir series, mainly because, as you’ve gathered, it’s rather different from what you get on MediaCorp Channel 5. Let’s face it – its worldview is the complete antithesis of the local mentality that television should promote happy, wholesome viewing. I believe thinking people (like you) would find the series a gripping walk on the wild side, if not a worthy journey of discovery. The chances are good if you’ve got this far into my article! And if not – well, you will have spent some quality time with Nanna, Sarah, Jan, Troels, Theis and Pernille, and you’ll know a little more about the big bad world.

Scandi-Noir: Also known as Nordic Noir

On a lighter note, a big part of the enjoyment is derived from trying to understand Danish. If you listen carefully, you will figure out a number of words (“nu” is now, “hus” is house, “tag” is thanks etc.). In fact, after twenty hours, if you haven’t picked up enough Danish to order a Carlsberg, you’ve probably been watching the American remake. American audiences don’t do subtitles, so an army of production companies exist to remake Scandi-Noirs in an English-speaking setting. Anna and I watched five minutes of the American version of Forbrydelsen and lost interest. There was no Sarah Lund, no Troels Hartmann, no moody shots of Copenhagen. It follows the universal law of remakes – 99.9% are inferior rubbish, watch the original.

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[1] Andrew, Dudley. Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film. Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 12.

[2]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/11741385/The-couple-who-invented-Nordic-Noir.html

[3] FYI Branagh is noted for his film adaptation of Hamlet. See the connection?

[4] A fourth novel, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, has just been released. It is written by David Lagercrantz, as Stieg Larson died of a heart-attack in 2004, before any of his novels were published.